The air smells of salt, and a strange silence sinks over the room.
“Is she okay?” Colette asks, her voice fevered, out of breath. But the baby has fallen silent; no more cries.
Faye swaddles her in a clean cloth, then places her onto Colette’s chest. But I feel the air change, the fear rising in all our throats. I rest a hand on the baby’s small back—the size of a large potato, not yet ripe but plucked from the soil all the same—feeling its warmth, its smooth waxen skin and soft center. Babies always remind me of something forged up from the garden, the mothers like the tender soil, bodies weak and worn out after delivery, in need of a long cold winter to rest.
It’s too soon, I think again. There is a hitch and flutter beneath its birdlike rib cage. Heart wobbling, something amiss.
I feel Faye at my side, and Netta wipes again at Colette’s forehead, cooing over the baby, trying to distract Colette. “She’s beautiful,” Netta says, her voice filled with warmth, a smile on her lips, the reassuring tone of a midwife’s assistant.
Faye and I walk to the door of the birthing hut and step out into the twilight.
I feel exhausted suddenly, eyelids heavy, all the scents of the forest hitting me at once. Pine and dew on moss. “What did you feel?” Faye asks.
“Her heart isn’t beating right,” I answer. “She came too soon.”
“It might be PDA,” Faye mutters. “A heart vessel not closing properly. It happens in premature births, but I’ve never seen it, only read about it.” Faye crosses her arms. “If it is, the baby will need a hospital, real doctors. More than just us.”
She blows out a shallow breath, her feet shifting in the dirt, knowing the fate of the baby as well as me. Because there are no hospitals, no doctors, and no way to reach them.
Faye touches my shoulder, lingering a moment, and I nod. A shared understanding: We know how this will likely end. She steps back into the birthing hut, but I don’t follow. I can’t. Instead, I find the path through the forest.
The woods are silent, the night animals not yet awake, and as I walk, I touch my own belly.
I whisper names that have no meaning yet, that might never exist.
But there is weight and substance beneath my palm. A thing growing inside. And it will change everything.
CALLA
I stand at the back of the garden, a hand over my eyes, and look out at the meadow for any sign of Bee returning from the birthing hut. She’s been gone a full day and night—but sometimes she likes to walk alone after a birth, her mind a tight coil needing unwinding. Still, I’m anxious for any word about the baby.
My mind feels anxious, unquiet, so I move through the garden, pulling up weeds that will sap moisture from the ground—the rhythm of it like a familiar friend, the garden a place where I feel safe. I pluck a sage leaf and rub it between my thumb and forefinger until it releases its earthy scent. I pull away a few dead leaves from the St. John’s wort—used for bruises and inflammation—the yellow flowers nearly ready to be gathered and ground into a paste. This is how I contribute to the community: the herbs I grow, the calendula tinctures, poppy essence, and wild arnica tonic, are used as medicine. Faye, our midwife, visits my garden every two weeks, and together we fill our aprons with green, fragrant herbs, then boil them down and steep them in sunflower oil to preserve them for future use.
I didn’t always know my way around a garden; my knowledge came from books, and from seasons spent out here in the soil.
On hands and knees, I move down the row of rosebushes, their buds growing heavy on the stalks, morning dew shimmering along the peach-hued petals. The rain that fell two nights ago has made everything green and sodden. The same rain we fear also keeps the garden blooming. A strange dichotomy.
My hands stall against the earth, and a feeling twitches through me—the haunting sense of déjà vu—the kind of memory that’s marrow-deep. I press my palm to the ground and clear away a layer of fallen leaves, sweat beading at my spine, eyes watering, then yank up a clump of knapweed.
But something else comes up with it, caught in the veiny roots.
I sit back on my heels and pluck the thing free from the dirt—holding it in my palm. It’s small, silver, not earthen-made. Carefully, I blow at its edges, and bits of soil and loam scatter, revealing a number on the small thing: 3.
My eyes refocus, holding the thing close, and I finally understand its shape: it’s a tiny silver book, no larger than my fingernail, with a small broken clasp.
Perhaps it was a child’s toy, dropped in the garden a century ago by the first settlers. But it doesn’t seem that old, the silver still has a shine to it. I run my thumb over it, trying to see if there are any other markings, a way to identify it, but there is only the number three—as if there were others like it. One and two, at least. Part of a collection.
But how did it find its way into the garden, buried beneath the wild roses?
I wipe the sweat from my eyes, glancing beyond the garden fence, when I see her: a flash of long auburn hair, hues of red shivering in the morning light.
Bee is moving swiftly down through the field, past the pond, toward the house—her stride is a pinwheel, every movement rounded and fluid. The world gives way for her, spreads open, clears a path.
I tuck the small book into the pocket of my apron and stand up, squinting through the slanted rays of sunlight.
“How is the baby?” I ask when she reaches the garden gate. A few nervous chickens scatter away from her, moving farther back into the garden to hunt for earthworms in the damp soil.
Bee shakes her head. “Not well.”
“Will she survive?”
My sister seems to look past me at the house, at the peeling blue walls, and the second-floor windows. But I know it’s just her eyes straying, not focused on anything in particular. A crease forms between her eyebrows. “Not without medicine or a doctor.”